WALL STREET ART

Wall Street art in downtown Toronto! This photo (above) was taken on Queen Street West and shows me working on the sidewalk infront of a mural I'd made on the construction walls of a store under renovation.

Blog TO: The Toronto Portraits

WALL STREET
ART! Mike Parsons, 31 years old. Kensington
St.

Canadian artists are always crediting our
northern environment as an inspiration for their work. Emily Carr, Margaret
Atwood and K.D. Lang have all acknowledged how our climate has
lead them to pursue themes of solitude and perseverance.

The weather effects street artist Mike
Parsons a direct way; if it's nasty outside no one will walk past his
stand on Queen West and buy his work.

Mike was born and raised in the remote
reaches of Scarborough. Being secluded from
the city next door began to wear on him in his teen years.

"Where I grew up in the suburbs it was
always a long trek or bus ride to the closest coffee shop and it
would always be the same people there. It would be hard to meet anyone else; I
started going downtown to party. I could see there were problems in Toronto, but I could also
see that in the suburbs there was no opportunity to communicate with people. I
went out one night to a basketball court to paint, just for fun, and I almost
got beat up. Everybody there was just hiding."

Mike loved comic books as a young man; he
dreamed of being a penciller for them one day. A large inspiration in his High
School years came from a Ralph Steadman book of "Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas" ink
drawings. One his teachers gave it to him.

"The High School teachers would often
encourage my art, but tell me there was no career in it. That was tough because
right after graduating I didn't really know what to do. I was just hanging out
in the suburbs, working at a garden centre with no idea. Luckily I eventually
came across a couple OCAD students who were working with me for the summer, and
were also getting a bit of illustration work on the side. That's when I
realized the teachers were wrong. I applied to OCAD and moved to Kensington
Market shortly after."

Downtown living was overwhelming to Mike at
first; his early Toronto
drawings show crowds of city dwellers as 'faceless bubbleheads' and the
cityscape as a giant, rusty gear. After a couple months, however, he realized
how important the hectic street life was to his vision.

"I knew if I was going to create
anything good, I was going to have to talk to people, to interview them. I kept
seeing people making 'Woe is me' art, talking about their problems, venting. I
wanted to find out what other people think, find out things that were common to
me and them, and explore that. Homeless people, businessmen, everyone."

His occasionally bumpy relationship with
OCAD only strengthened his resolve to stick to graphic, comic book-like ink
drawings. As he began to experiment with creating and selling canvasses on the
street from a stand, his signature style became an asset to separate his work
from everyone elses. Soon, the gallery scene beckoned.

"The gallery situation for me felt
like a glass bubble; like something that segregated the artist from the people
coming in. Instantly I felt like if I took this route, that I probably wouldn't
get to talk to people. I find it so weird, because there are people who will
approach you on the street and start talking to you like it's nothing, but once
you go into a gallery setting it's like 'you're that guy!'"

Mike has had a lot of success as Toronto's most prolific wall
& street artist. He made the cover of NOW Magazine in 2003, he's
been commissioned for a number of billboards around town and most recently he
was chosen by the Art Gallery of Ontario to design a limited edition
t-shirt for their re-opening this month. They are for sale in the gift shop at
the Dundas
entrance.

His wall street art work is extremely engaging; there is a
story in each of canvasses, like a single panel comic, if you study them long
enough. His style has remained constant but his technical skills and deft
commentary on city living have continued to mature. As Mike gets older, though,
the prospect of keeping his art stand open year round is increasingly dim.

"Being out on the streets is really
difficult on the body. You're in the elements, the water, the dirt and the
wind, and it wears on you physically. I would never want to stop working on the
streets entirely, but I realize that in five years I don't want to be hauling
my stuff down everyday, when I'm 35 or 36. I have to make the switch to
galleries, but I also want keep going with my interaction with people. A street level
studio with large windows would be ideal, but I haven't found that yet."

This wall street art article was featured
in the November 2008 edition of Blog T.O.